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Confronting industrialism: if you can’t clean it up, don’t make it! Updated for 2026

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Some of the most important questions confronting us are: what should we do about this culture’s industrial wastes, from greenhouse gases to pesticides to ocean microplastics?

Can the capitalists clean up the messes they create? Or is the whole industrial system beyond reform? The answers become clear with a little context.

Let’s start the discussion of context with two riddles that aren’t very funny.

Q: What do you get when a cross a long drug habit, a quick temper, and a gun?
A: Two life terms for murder, with earliest release date 2026.

And,

Q: What do you get when you cross a large corporation, two nation states, 40 tons of poison, and at least 8,000 dead human beings?
A: Retirement with full pay and benefits. Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide. Bhopal.

The point of these riddles is not merely that when it comes to murder and many other atrocities, different rules apply to the poor than to the rich. And it’s not merely that ‘economic production’ is a get-out-of-jail free card for whatever atrocities the ‘producers’ commit, whether it’s genocide, gynocide, ecocide, slaving, mass murder, mass poisoning, and so on.

Do we even care? We already know they don’t …

The point here is that this culture is clearly not particularly interested in cleaning up its toxic messes. Obviously, or it wouldn’t keep making them. It wouldn’t allow those who make these messes to do so with impunity. It certainly wouldn’t socially reward those who make them.

This may or may not be the appropriate time to mention that this culture has created, for example, 14 quadrillion (yes, quadrillion) lethal doses of Plutonium 239, which has a half-life of over 24,000 years, which means that in a mere 100,000 years that number will be all the way down to only about 3.5 quadrillion lethal doses: Yay!

And socially reward them it does. I could have used a whole host of examples other than Warren Anderson, who was playing on the back nine long after he should have been hanging by the neck (he was sentenced to death in absentia, but the US refused to extradite him).

There’s Tony Hayward, who oversaw BP’s devastation of the Gulf of Mexico and who was ‘punished’ for this with a severance package worth well over $30 million. Or we could throw another couple of riddles at you, which are really the same riddles:

Q: What do you call someone who puts poison in the subways of Tokyo?
A: A terrorist.

Q: What do you call someone who puts poison (cyanide) into groundwater?
A: A capitalist: CEO of a gold mining corporation.

We could talk about frackers, who make money as they poison groundwater. We could talk about anyone associated with Monsanto. You can add your own examples. I’d say you can ‘choose your poison’ but of course you can’t. Those are chosen for you by those doing the poisoning.

Civilization’s ability to overcome our native common sense

I keep thinking about one of the most fundamentally sound (and fundamentally disregarded) statements I’ve ever read. After Bhopal, one of the doctors trying to help survivors stated that corporations (and by extension, all organizations and individuals) “shouldn’t be permitted to make poison for which there is no antidote.”

Please note, by the way, that far from having antidotes, nine out of ten chemicals used in pesticides in the US haven’t even been thoroughly tested for (human) toxicity.

Isn’t that something we were all supposed to learn by the time we were three? Isn’t it one of the first lessons our parents are supposed to teach us? Don’t make a mess you can’t clean up!

Yet that is precisely the foundational motivator of this culture. Sure, we can use fancy phrases to describe the processes of creating messes we have no intention of cleaning up, and in many cases cannot clean up.

And so we get phrases like ‘developing natural resources’, or ‘sustainable development’, or ‘technological progress’ (like the invention and production of plastics, the bathing of the world in endocrine disruptors, and so on), or ‘mining’, or ‘agriculture’, or ‘the Green Revolution’, or ‘fueling growth’, or ‘creating jobs’, or ‘building empire’, or ‘global trade’.

But physical reality is always more important than what we call it or how we rationalize it. And the truth is that this culture has been based from the beginning to the present on privatizing benefits and externalizing costs. In other words, on exploiting others and leaving messes behind.

Hell, they call them ‘limited liability corporations’ because a primary purpose is to limit the legal and financial liability of those who benefit from the actions of corporations for the harm these actions cause.

Internalizing insanity

This is no way to run a childhood, and it’s an even worse way to run a culture. It’s killing the planet. Part of the problem is that most of us are insane, having been made so by this culture. We should never forget what RD Laing wrote about this insanity:

“In order to rationalize our industrial-military complex [and I would say this entire way of life, including the creation of messes we have neither the interest nor capacity to clean up], we have to destroy our capacity to see clearly any more what is in front of, and to imagine what is beyond, our noses. Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste to our own sanity.

“We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high IQs, if possible.”

We’ve all seen this too many times. If you ask any reasonably intelligent seven-year-old how to stop global warming caused in great measure by the burning of oil and gas and by the destruction of forests and prairies and wetlands, this child might well say, “Stop burning oil and gas, and stop destroying forests and prairies and wetlands!”

If you ask a reasonably intelligent thirty-year-old who works for a ‘green’ high tech industry, you’ll probably get an answer that primarily helps the industry that pays his or her salary.

Part of the brainwashing process of turning us into imbeciles consists of getting us to identify more closely with-and care more about the fate of-this culture rather than the real physical world. We are taught that the economy is the ‘real world’, and the real world is merely a place from which to steal and on which to dump externalities.

Does nature have to adapt to us? Or us to nature?

Most of us internalize this lesson so completely that it becomes entirely transparent to us. Even most environmentalists internalize this. What do most mainstream solutions to global warming have in common? They all take industrialism as a given, and the natural world as having to conform to industrialism.

They all take empire as a given. They all take overshoot as a given. All of this is literally insane, in terms of being out of touch with physical reality. The real world must always be more important than our social system, in part because without a real world you can’t have any social system whatsoever. It’s embarrassing to have to write this.

Upton Sinclair famously said that it’s hard to make a man understand something, when his job depends on him not understanding it.

I would add that it’s hard to make people understand something when the benefits they accrue through their exploitative and destructive way of life depend on it. So we suddenly get really stupid about the waste products produced by this culture.

When people ask how we can stop polluting the oceans with plastic, they don’t really mean, “How can we stop polluting the oceans with plastic?” They mean, “How can we stop polluting the oceans with plastic and still have this way of life?”

And when they ask how we can stop global warming, they really mean, “How can we stop global warming without stopping this level of energy usage?”. When they ask how we can have clean groundwater, they really mean, “How can we have clean groundwater while we continue to use and spread all over the environment thousands of useful but toxic chemicals that end up in groundwater?”

The answer to all of these is: you can’t.

First we must recover our sanity. Then we must act

As I’ve been writing this essay about the messes caused by this culture, there’s an allegorical image I can’t get out of my mind. It’s of a half-dozen Emergency Medical Technicians putting bandages on a person who has been assaulted by a knife-wielding psychopath.

The EMTs are trying desperately to stop this person from bleeding out. It’s all very tense and suspenseful as to whether they’ll be able to staunch the flow of blood before the person dies.

But here’s the problem: as these EMTs are applying bandages as fast as they can, the psychopath is continuing to stab the victim. Worse, the psychopath is making wounds faster than the EMTs are able to bandage them. And the psychopath is paid very well for stabbing the victim, while most of the EMTs are bandaging in their spare time.

And in fact the health of the economy is based on how much blood the victim loses – as in this culture, where economic production is measured by the conversion of living landbase into raw materials, e.g., living forests into two-by-fours, living mountains into coal.

How do we stop the victim from bleeding out? Any child can tell you. And any sane person who cares more about the health of the victim than the health of the economy that is based on dismembering the victim can tell you. The first thing you need to do is stop the stabbing. No amount of bandages will make up for an assault that is ongoing, indeed, one that is accelerating.

What do we do about this culture’s fabrication of industrial wastes? The first step is stop their production. Actually the first step is that we regain our sanity, that is, we transfer our loyalty away from the psychopaths, and toward the victim, toward, in this case, the planet that is our only home.

Once we do that, everything else is technical. How do we stop them? We stop them.

 

 

Derrick Jensen is Member of the Steering Committee of Deep Green Resistance. See more details. Read Derrick Jensen’s blog.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Reclaim Environmentalism!’ by Derrick Jensen & Lierre Keith.

 

 




390964

Confronting industrialism: if you can’t clean it up, don’t make it! Updated for 2026

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Some of the most important questions confronting us are: what should we do about this culture’s industrial wastes, from greenhouse gases to pesticides to ocean microplastics?

Can the capitalists clean up the messes they create? Or is the whole industrial system beyond reform? The answers become clear with a little context.

Let’s start the discussion of context with two riddles that aren’t very funny.

Q: What do you get when a cross a long drug habit, a quick temper, and a gun?
A: Two life terms for murder, with earliest release date 2026.

And,

Q: What do you get when you cross a large corporation, two nation states, 40 tons of poison, and at least 8,000 dead human beings?
A: Retirement with full pay and benefits. Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide. Bhopal.

The point of these riddles is not merely that when it comes to murder and many other atrocities, different rules apply to the poor than to the rich. And it’s not merely that ‘economic production’ is a get-out-of-jail free card for whatever atrocities the ‘producers’ commit, whether it’s genocide, gynocide, ecocide, slaving, mass murder, mass poisoning, and so on.

Do we even care? We already know they don’t …

The point here is that this culture is clearly not particularly interested in cleaning up its toxic messes. Obviously, or it wouldn’t keep making them. It wouldn’t allow those who make these messes to do so with impunity. It certainly wouldn’t socially reward those who make them.

This may or may not be the appropriate time to mention that this culture has created, for example, 14 quadrillion (yes, quadrillion) lethal doses of Plutonium 239, which has a half-life of over 24,000 years, which means that in a mere 100,000 years that number will be all the way down to only about 3.5 quadrillion lethal doses: Yay!

And socially reward them it does. I could have used a whole host of examples other than Warren Anderson, who was playing on the back nine long after he should have been hanging by the neck (he was sentenced to death in absentia, but the US refused to extradite him).

There’s Tony Hayward, who oversaw BP’s devastation of the Gulf of Mexico and who was ‘punished’ for this with a severance package worth well over $30 million. Or we could throw another couple of riddles at you, which are really the same riddles:

Q: What do you call someone who puts poison in the subways of Tokyo?
A: A terrorist.

Q: What do you call someone who puts poison (cyanide) into groundwater?
A: A capitalist: CEO of a gold mining corporation.

We could talk about frackers, who make money as they poison groundwater. We could talk about anyone associated with Monsanto. You can add your own examples. I’d say you can ‘choose your poison’ but of course you can’t. Those are chosen for you by those doing the poisoning.

Civilization’s ability to overcome our native common sense

I keep thinking about one of the most fundamentally sound (and fundamentally disregarded) statements I’ve ever read. After Bhopal, one of the doctors trying to help survivors stated that corporations (and by extension, all organizations and individuals) “shouldn’t be permitted to make poison for which there is no antidote.”

Please note, by the way, that far from having antidotes, nine out of ten chemicals used in pesticides in the US haven’t even been thoroughly tested for (human) toxicity.

Isn’t that something we were all supposed to learn by the time we were three? Isn’t it one of the first lessons our parents are supposed to teach us? Don’t make a mess you can’t clean up!

Yet that is precisely the foundational motivator of this culture. Sure, we can use fancy phrases to describe the processes of creating messes we have no intention of cleaning up, and in many cases cannot clean up.

And so we get phrases like ‘developing natural resources’, or ‘sustainable development’, or ‘technological progress’ (like the invention and production of plastics, the bathing of the world in endocrine disruptors, and so on), or ‘mining’, or ‘agriculture’, or ‘the Green Revolution’, or ‘fueling growth’, or ‘creating jobs’, or ‘building empire’, or ‘global trade’.

But physical reality is always more important than what we call it or how we rationalize it. And the truth is that this culture has been based from the beginning to the present on privatizing benefits and externalizing costs. In other words, on exploiting others and leaving messes behind.

Hell, they call them ‘limited liability corporations’ because a primary purpose is to limit the legal and financial liability of those who benefit from the actions of corporations for the harm these actions cause.

Internalizing insanity

This is no way to run a childhood, and it’s an even worse way to run a culture. It’s killing the planet. Part of the problem is that most of us are insane, having been made so by this culture. We should never forget what RD Laing wrote about this insanity:

“In order to rationalize our industrial-military complex [and I would say this entire way of life, including the creation of messes we have neither the interest nor capacity to clean up], we have to destroy our capacity to see clearly any more what is in front of, and to imagine what is beyond, our noses. Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste to our own sanity.

“We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high IQs, if possible.”

We’ve all seen this too many times. If you ask any reasonably intelligent seven-year-old how to stop global warming caused in great measure by the burning of oil and gas and by the destruction of forests and prairies and wetlands, this child might well say, “Stop burning oil and gas, and stop destroying forests and prairies and wetlands!”

If you ask a reasonably intelligent thirty-year-old who works for a ‘green’ high tech industry, you’ll probably get an answer that primarily helps the industry that pays his or her salary.

Part of the brainwashing process of turning us into imbeciles consists of getting us to identify more closely with-and care more about the fate of-this culture rather than the real physical world. We are taught that the economy is the ‘real world’, and the real world is merely a place from which to steal and on which to dump externalities.

Does nature have to adapt to us? Or us to nature?

Most of us internalize this lesson so completely that it becomes entirely transparent to us. Even most environmentalists internalize this. What do most mainstream solutions to global warming have in common? They all take industrialism as a given, and the natural world as having to conform to industrialism.

They all take empire as a given. They all take overshoot as a given. All of this is literally insane, in terms of being out of touch with physical reality. The real world must always be more important than our social system, in part because without a real world you can’t have any social system whatsoever. It’s embarrassing to have to write this.

Upton Sinclair famously said that it’s hard to make a man understand something, when his job depends on him not understanding it.

I would add that it’s hard to make people understand something when the benefits they accrue through their exploitative and destructive way of life depend on it. So we suddenly get really stupid about the waste products produced by this culture.

When people ask how we can stop polluting the oceans with plastic, they don’t really mean, “How can we stop polluting the oceans with plastic?” They mean, “How can we stop polluting the oceans with plastic and still have this way of life?”

And when they ask how we can stop global warming, they really mean, “How can we stop global warming without stopping this level of energy usage?”. When they ask how we can have clean groundwater, they really mean, “How can we have clean groundwater while we continue to use and spread all over the environment thousands of useful but toxic chemicals that end up in groundwater?”

The answer to all of these is: you can’t.

First we must recover our sanity. Then we must act

As I’ve been writing this essay about the messes caused by this culture, there’s an allegorical image I can’t get out of my mind. It’s of a half-dozen Emergency Medical Technicians putting bandages on a person who has been assaulted by a knife-wielding psychopath.

The EMTs are trying desperately to stop this person from bleeding out. It’s all very tense and suspenseful as to whether they’ll be able to staunch the flow of blood before the person dies.

But here’s the problem: as these EMTs are applying bandages as fast as they can, the psychopath is continuing to stab the victim. Worse, the psychopath is making wounds faster than the EMTs are able to bandage them. And the psychopath is paid very well for stabbing the victim, while most of the EMTs are bandaging in their spare time.

And in fact the health of the economy is based on how much blood the victim loses – as in this culture, where economic production is measured by the conversion of living landbase into raw materials, e.g., living forests into two-by-fours, living mountains into coal.

How do we stop the victim from bleeding out? Any child can tell you. And any sane person who cares more about the health of the victim than the health of the economy that is based on dismembering the victim can tell you. The first thing you need to do is stop the stabbing. No amount of bandages will make up for an assault that is ongoing, indeed, one that is accelerating.

What do we do about this culture’s fabrication of industrial wastes? The first step is stop their production. Actually the first step is that we regain our sanity, that is, we transfer our loyalty away from the psychopaths, and toward the victim, toward, in this case, the planet that is our only home.

Once we do that, everything else is technical. How do we stop them? We stop them.

 

 

Derrick Jensen is Member of the Steering Committee of Deep Green Resistance. See more details. Read Derrick Jensen’s blog.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Reclaim Environmentalism!’ by Derrick Jensen & Lierre Keith.

 

 




390964

Advice to prospective graduate students Updated for 2026

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http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=53

“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com

Getting into grad school is a lot of work. By now, most North American PhD programs in ecology are in the “recruitment phase”. Students have already taken their GRE entrance exams, contacted professors, obtained letters of recommendation, written applications, and waited. Soon they will be visiting prospective universities for the dreaded interview weekend. Below is a list of things (originally published in 2014) that we wish we’d known going into grad-school recruitment. Got others? Share them in the comments section below.

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t know much going into graduate school interviews. What I did know was that a commitment to grad school is more than a commitment to a program. I knew that I’d be committing to a relationship with people – especially my potential advisor and lab mates – and that I’d be committing to a relationship with a geographical location – between high school and grad school, I’d never lived in one place for longer than 3 years (thanks in part to an extended stay in junior college), so this was a big deal for me. My eventual recruitment trips reflected this. I asked a lot of questions about grad student – advisor relationships, and I asked a lot of questions about the places I was visiting. Here are some things I didn’t really think about, though:

  1. Try to get to know your potential advisor. A bad relationship with your advisor can poison your grad school experience. And although asking fellow grad students about their relationships can be useful, your relationship with your new advisor is going to be a reflection of your two personalities. No two relationships are the same, so use this opportunity to get to know your potential advisor as best you can.
  2. The same thing goes for getting know a place. One of the things I truly regret not taking advantage of while I was interviewing was the opportunity to travel. If you have time, stay a couple extra days and check out your potential future home.
  3. Take control of your spare time. Recruitment weekends can be really hectic, especially if you end up with a day of back-to-back-to-back interviews. If you need a break, do it. For me, this meant reminding myself that it was okay to stop and use the bathroom between meetings, even if said bathroom breaks weren’t scheduled. I guess an alternative could be to invest in a stadium pal.
  4. Finally ask your hosts about the questions they wish they had asked. In addition to providing some good advice, this can also be a nice window into the hopes and regrets of grad students who have made the exact decision that you’re contemplating. A group of fantastic grad students in the biology department at UNC put together this handy list of things to talk to your potential advisor about before you accept a position in their lab. Who knows, maybe your host has put something like this together, too. -Fletcher Halliday

When I made the decision to start a PhD program, I had the advantage of having already obtained a masters’ degree and taking time off (2.5 years) from grad school. From this perspective I knew something that I think most, particularly young fresh-from-undergrad applicants, don’t take seriously enough when making a final decision on what program to attend. That is, the whole ‘life’ picture – strike a balance between a program and a place that will allow you to achieve balance (when you have time!). Grad school is super intense and stressful. If you end up at an awesome school that is in an awful and unfriendly town your work could ultimately suffer because of it (and vice versa!). While at recruitment take the time to scope out life outside the walls of the university. Definitely ask current students how they feel about the area and what they do for fun. I really feel many don’t think through how their personal-side of life will look during grad school. Don’t assume you can compromise personal happiness, particularly in a program that may last 4-8 years! -Kylla Benes

When you’re visiting a lab, take some time to meet the other grad students.  Whether you become best friends or not, if you join their lab you’ll be spending plenty of time with these people.  Also, these are people who have gone through the same process you are, and have been accepted to a lab and (hopefully) feel happy there.  If you’re visiting for more than a day, go out for dinner and beers with them, and ask them every single question you can think of.  What’s it really like working in their lab?  Is the professor nice or is he or she a jerk?  Do they micromanage or do they expect their students to be independent?  How long do most graduate students take to graduate?  What sorts of jobs do they get afterwards?  How much do grad students make, and how does that compare to the city’s cost of living?  What sorts of things do students do for fun outside of school?  Is there a good social scene (how far away are the bars) or is it a pretty quiet city? Kylla mentioned this already, but I wanted to emphasize how important this question is. You may be surprised with the answers they give, but you’ll definitely be glad you asked. -Nate Johnson

Like Nate, I also encourage you to seek out grad students, ideally as far from campus as possible (I know our institute arranges lunches and/or dinners that are students-only). I’ve found that graduate students are nothing if not candid, especially when it comes time to bitch about their job/lack of pay. So take everything that is said with a grain of salt and ask them straight up “You’ve mentioned a lot of negative things, why are you here?” Also know that their opinion is not the only one: I’ve seen labs where some people absolutely despise their advisor (and labmates), and others in the very same lab get along famously (both with advisors and each other). So don’t get stuck talking to the one disgruntled student, or if you do, know that they are probably using you as an outlet to vent every negative thing they hate about their life.

I also think its important to point out that interviews run both ways: yes, you should be on your best behavior, but so should they. So while it seems like most of the pressure is on you, you hold more of the cards: if they’ve invited you up for the weekend and offered to pay your way, they want you. You have passed muster: your grades are good, your statements were compelling, you demonstrate potential to succeed, and most notably, some faculty has stood up and said “Yes, I will shepherd* them through 3-7 years of intellectual exploration!” (*fund) So relax, take a breath, and enjoy yourself. If you’re more comfortable, you’re also likely to come across better. And don’t be afraid to admit that this advisor/lab/school isn’t for you. I had an interview where I knew pretty much right off the bat that it wasn’t a good fit, on any level. We parted amicably (I hope!) but I wrote the person immediately afterwards and said thank you, I appreciated you taking the time to show me around, but personally I didn’t feel it was a good fit.

Good luck! -Jon Lefcheck

On these trips it’s easy to focus on the faculty and to some extent the grad students in the lab and program. That’s all very valuable, but it’s also a good idea to interact with the other prospectives as well. I definitely DON’T mean being competitive with them, because if you choose to enter that program, some subset of that group will be your cohort, which can be your most valuable asset in getting through grad school. Your peers will help you normalize manuscript rejections, listen to you vent about research frustrations and qualifying exam anxieties. Of course, you don’t know who will and won’t join the program in your interview group, but it’s worthwhile to consider whether they are a group of people you could see yourself spending time with socially (though it’s not necessary) or who you would want to have access to when you need emergency field assistance on the tide flats at 3 am.

And to reiterate what was said above, remember that current grads and faculty can also get burned out by these events. I agree with Jon that everyone should be on their best behavior! But, if they do seem tired or cynical, maybe just remember that it can be an occupational hazard from time to time.

Also, never get intimidated by the process (easier said than done). It’s all about fit, and the timing. These interviews certainly feel like a performance, but you need to be a certain amount of relaxed to be able to take in all the information about the program and people that will help you make a decision about what’s good for you. – Emily Grason

 

February 12, 2015

WEF: Big energy CEOs don’t get the renewable revolution Updated for 2026

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The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

 

 

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

 

 




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WEF: Big energy CEOs don’t get the renewable revolution Updated for 2026

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The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

 

 

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

 

 




389374

WEF: Big energy CEOs don’t get the renewable revolution Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

 

 

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

 

 




389374

WEF: Big energy CEOs don’t get the renewable revolution Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

 

 

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

 

 




389374

WEF: Big energy CEOs don’t get the renewable revolution Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

 

 

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

 

 




389374

WEF: Big energy CEOs just don’t get the renewable revolution Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




The World Economic Forum’s ‘The Future of Electricity‘ report on power generation makes depressing reading.

Perhaps the pessimism about new technologies is predictable given that Davos represents large companies, not the innovative companies at frontier of energy transformation.

Even so, to say that renewable power sources, excluding hydro, are projected to generate less than a quarter of OECD electricity by 2040 is a strikingly conservative. The percentage is probably about 8% today.

Part of their pessimism seems to derive from a very outdated view of the economics of solar power. Take a look at the chart (right). It shows WEF’s estimates for the costs of electricity generation now and in the future.

The yellow line at the top, starting off the scale, is solar PV. A megawatt hour is said to cost well over $200 in 2016 (about £130). Even by 2030 it’ll be over $110.

PV in Dubai is already at half the price WEF predicts in 20130

I think the people in Davos may have been imbibing too much of the local homebrew. Today, in overcast Britain, groups of installers are racing to put panels on the ground as fast as they can across the southern counties to ensure that they get the current subsidy rates.

The price they get for a medium-sized commercial field? A subsidy of about $100 a megawatt hour (6.38 pence per kilowatt hour) plus the wholesale price of electricity. Let’s call that $70 a megawatt hour in addition.

So even in one of the least attractive parts of the world, PV is already cheaper than WEF says, and by a large margin. More tellingly, one of the latest auctions for installing PV, in Dubai in November last year, produced a figure of about $65 a megawatt hour.

Just to be clear: an installation firm promised to install a large PV farm if it was paid less than a third of the price that WEF says is the underlying cost of solar in 2016 – and about half the price it predicts for 2030.

Open a newspaper in most parts of the world today, and you’ll see optimistic references to the prospect of ‘grid parity’ for the best suited renewable in the local market, whether it is biomass, onshore wind, storage or PV.

A business-oriented organisation like WEF should spend more time in the outside world, sensing the excitement about the rates of progress of low-carbon technologies rather than unquestioningly repeating the five year old wisdom of its leading sponsors.

Perhaps most surprisingly, WEF’s cost figures are approximately 50% higher than those produced by the International Energy Agency, long a sceptic about the progress of PV. And its figures for onshore wind are equally wrong.

By now, I would have thought that at least parts of big business would have recognised the inevitability of the transition to renewables (with storage) and begun to look at how it could profitably participate.

WEF: what are your sources?

None of the projections, estimates or calculations in the report are given a source. We cannot check their accuracy or even the provenance of their figures.

I’m sure that the writers of the document have tried to use reasonable data. But the report is stacked full of statements made without any support or justification, many of which look highly contentious.

We are expected to believe, for example, that “wholesale electricity prices are expected to continue to rise by 57% in the EU” between now and 2040 at the same as retail prices are expected to stay the same. It doesn’t need an economist to say that such a combination is impossible.  

My confidence in the report’s recommendations was further shaken by WEF’s assertion that the EU had wasted $100bn by siting wind and PV in the wrong countries.

“It is obvious to most European citizens that southern Europe has the lion’s share of the solar irradiation while northern Europe has the wind”, says the report – before concluding that Germany has installed too much PV and Spain too much wind.

Wong again. 2013 estimates from the IEA suggest that the average productivity of a Spanish turbine was 26.9% of its maximum capacity, but only 18.5% in Germany. Spain’s wind turbines are almost 50% more productive than Germany’s. In fact Spain managed slightly more than the worldwide average and was only just below the UK or Denmark in average output.

The real stories the WEF missed

Actually, it isn’t that ‘northern Europe has the wind’ but rather that westerly coasts have high wind speeds, making Spain and Portugal’s Atlantic turbines better than almost any inshore areas in northern Europe.

There’s a second reason why Spain should have wind turbines: wind speeds are relatively poorly correlated with the winds in northern Europe. For a more secure European supply, turbines in Spain have a high value, particularly when interconnection with France is improved.

 And in the case of Germany, which does have much lower output from PV than Spain, the argument that it should have left the solar revolution to its southern neighbours is a remarkably ahistorical conclusion.

Without Germany’s very costly support of PV a decade ago we would not currently be looking at grid parity for solar across much of the world.

 

 

Chris Goodall is an expert on energy, environment and climate change and valued contributor to The Ecologist. He blogs at Carbon Commentary.

The report: ‘The Future of Electricity – Attracting Investment to Build Tomorrow’s Electricity Sector‘, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, “outlines recommendations to attract the needed investment and grasp these new opportunities.”

This article was originally published on Carbon Commentary.

 

 




389374

Green surge – 13 reasons why the Greens are a party whose time has come Updated for 2026

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After thousands of new members have joined this week, the Green Parties in Scotland and England and Wales now have more than both UKIP and the Lib Dems.

Farage’s party has 41,943, the Lib Dems head of membership tells me that they now have 44,680. On Wednesday, the Greens gained 2,000 members across the UK and overtook UKIP.

Today, Thursday, so far, they’ve gained more than 2000 more. As I write, Scottish Greens + the Green Party of England and Wales are at a combined total of 44,713.

In 2003, there were around 5,000 signed up Greens across the UK. That’s about the same number as has joined this week. What’s caused this growth, which has now so dramatically accelerated?

1) The debates

There’s something strange about British politics: an obsession with process. A huge portion of people feel that the exclusion of the Greens from the election debates is unfair.

For those who vote Green, or were thinking about it, being told that their chosen party isn’t significant is almost a personal affront. Hundreds of thousands signed a petition calling on the Greens to be included. Some clearly decided that they’d go one step further, and sign up.

2) The referendum

A huge portion of the growth took place in Scotland the week after the independence referendum – when the Scottish Greens grew from 1,800 members to 7,500. But it wasn’t just in Scotland. There was a significant surge in Green support in England and Wales that week too.

As one new member in Oxford put it to me, they and their partner had been students at Glasgow university. They were excited by the radical independence campaign, ‘Green Yes’, and the broader Yes movement. That’s what inspired them to join.

3) The Labour Party

It’s been 21 years since Tony Blair became leader of Labour. And throughout that time, despite ‘modernising’ it he also become a shield for it. People could persuade themselves that they still supported Labour, they just didn’t like Blair.

When Miliband came in, the excuses were gone. What was clearly the most left of the centre-left candidates of Labour had won the leadership. And the party still supported austerity. Without the charisma to be blamed personally, people started to look more closely at the party as a whole, and have found it wanting.

Look at a timeline of the growth in Green membership, and there were two, almost simultaneous events which happened before it started. If one was the referendum, the other was the 2014 Labour Party conference.

4) It’s the economy, stupid

Perhaps in a bid to stem the Green tide, Ed Miliband gave a speech about how much he cares about climate change.

Now, here’s the thing. I suspect he means it. But saying you care about climate change if you aren’t willing to stand up to big oil companies would be like saying you care about inequality without being willing to tackle bankers’ bonuses.

The fundamental problem in society is the power of massive corporations – of capital. And as long as Miliband and Balls promise to retain Tory cuts, as long as Labour remains a party of austerity, they will always look like they are on the side of capital, not ordinary people.

To put it another way, people have joined the Green Party because it opposes austerity and Labour doesn’t: the Greens have become the reasonable party of the left. 

5) The Lib Dems

A huge portion of the new Green membership is under the age of 30. The older ones in this group largely voted Lib Dem in 2010, and were then disenchanted not just by the trebling of fees but the blatant cynicism of Lib Dem leaders betraying their solemn promises.

The younger ones are of the sort who the Lib Dems were good at attracting five years ago. No more. For a long time, Lib Dems were able to appeal to different electorates by pretending to be very different things. Being in government meant they could only be one of those things.

6) UKIP

One consistent message from new members is that they felt so horrified by the rise of UKIP that they had to do something. The sense that Greens have the only party standing up to UKIP rather than pandering to them seems to have attracted many to the party.

A case in point here is the surge in Green membership around the Rochester and Strood by-election, where the party ran with the slogan “say no to racism”. When I got off the train in Rochester on polling day, the first person I bumped into had a big Green Party badge on, and had just joined, largely for that reason.

Likewise, though it’s uncomfortable for many Greens to admit this, UKIP have reshaped British politics in a way that’s good for outsiders of all hues.

They’ve shown that you can have huge political influence by supporting a party that will almost certainly not be in government; along with the SNP, they’ve made newer and smaller parties the major story of this election, and they’ve generated (along with the yes campaign) a sense that the establishment is on the run. These things all help Greens.

7) The politicisation of young people 

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the growth of the Greens is that around a quarter of new members are under 30. It used to be that the first rule of generation Y was ‘don’t join anything’. The fact that thousands have broken that is fascinating.

Specifically, the generation who flooded central London with angry protests four years ago has now graduated, and is facing a general election.

Looking for political organisations they can join now that their student union days are behind them and their university societies distant memories, they’ve largely rejected – or, more tellingly, not even considered, the NGOs that the New Left of their parents generations built.

They are interested in questioning power and the inter-relationships between problems, not just campaigning on one single issue after another. They don’t just want to sign petitions, they want to organise collectively to challenge those who rule them, and the Green Party has become a key path to do that through.

8) Syriza, Podemos and the global fightback 

This generation is very alert to the political mobilisations taking place across Europe. It was not just that the Scottish referendum showed that participating in official politics could be effective, even transformative.

The rise of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain in particular are inspiring a younger generation to rethink the opportunities offered by electoral and party politics

9) The snowball effect 

If the referendum and the Labour conference were the two external events which kicked off the surge, there was an internal one too.

The Green Party of England and Wales got quite a lot of coverage, back in September, for passing 20,000 members. This chat about joining clearly acted as an encouragement to lots of people to join, because there was a huge boost to membership in the next few days.

10) Natalie’s tours

Natalie Bennett is the second ever Green Party leader – before her, there was Caroline Lucas, and before her, there wasn’t a leader.

Caroline, because she was candidate and then MP in the target constituency, had to pour a huge amount of her time into Brighton. Natalie, on the other hand, has been touring the UK, often speaking to public meetings two or three times a week.

On Wednesday night, the day that 2,000 people joined the party, 600 people in Exeter turned out to hear Natalie Bennett speak. Tonight, hundreds are hearing her speak in Norwich. For two and a half years, week after week, local parties have reported surprisingly large turnouts – with two or three hundred people showing up where they usually get five to a meeting.

That means there are thousands of people across the country who’ve been to a public meeting with Natalie Bennett. I know some who have joined directly because of that.

It’s worth asking the question: of the new members, who finally made up their mind and joined because of one of the more short term factors above, how many were in one of those meetings? Or were recruited by someone who joined at one of those meetings?

More generally, having a national leader who isn’t also the key target candidate has given the party the chance to develop a national strategy, outside of the few strongholds its traditionally done well in.

11) The move to the left

Greens have always been on the left. But they haven’t always been very good at sounding like it. Instead, too often, they’ve sounded like a sort of preachy hair-shirt party, who wants to tax anything fun.

Of course, more often this is an image painted of the party by its enemies, but Greens haven’t always been brilliant at challenging it.

Equally damaging, there’s long been a sense that Greens are a single-issue environmental party. In order to combat this, it was important that Greens spend a lot of time telling a different story about themselves. And, for years, they largely failed to do this – instead using party communications to appeal to the select group who already agreed.

With Caroline and then Natalie out in front, and with the (left leaning and very influential) Young Greens and groups like Green Left organising among the activists, the image presented in recent years has been much more consistently left. Gone are the days of ‘not left or right but forwards’. The party is now clearly an electoral expression of the emerging new left.

Last year, the minority in the party who don’t like this (old fashioned ecologist liberals) set up a group to oppose this shift. As a response to the ‘watermelons’ of Green Left (green on the outside, red in the middle), they established a conference newsletter ‘the kiwi and the lime’ (green all the way through).

Their protests were largely ignored, and the surge in membership is the party’s reward: at new members meetings all across the country, people cite the Greens opposition to austerity, and being the only party left on the left, as key reasons for joining. 

12) Staying radical

For a long time, Greens had radical policies – like supporting Basic Income – but were often a little embarrassed to talk about them. Natalie Bennett, who has an impressive grasp of the complexities of policy, has been more comfortable highlighting such ideas.

After the financial crisis, huge numbers are coming to the conclusion that ideas which aren’t radical aren’t enough, and Greens have got a lot better at attracting them.

13) Telling a story about the party

For years, the party used to seem to basically put out press releases in response to external events, long after the articles about them had been written.

Not only was this a useless media strategy, it also failed to tell any clear story about who the party was. And so people accepted stories written by others (cf hair shirts).

Since Natalie’s taken over, they’ve been much better at gaining proactive media coverage, and been much more willing to embrace conflict and controversy (because the opposite of being controversial is being ignored).

Whether gaining headlines by announcing support for a £10 minimum wage or getting praise for bare-knucked denunciations of Farage’s migrant-bashing, the leading Greens have got much better at using the media to paint a picture of a party that’s on the left side of the brewing culture war, that’s fearless in the face of the establishment.

Of course, what happens next is all to play for.

 

 

Adam Ramsay is the Co-Editor of OurKingdom and also works with Bright Green. Before, he was a full time campaigner with People & Planet. His e-book ‘42 Reasons to Support Scottish Independence‘ is now available.

Author’s declaration of interest: I am a long-standing member of the Green Party.

This article was originally published on openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

Creative Commons License

 

 




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